


to the end of his triumph

by karples



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Break Up, Established Relationship, Flashbacks, Gonna Be Jossed, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Nostalgia, Post-Break Up, Pre-Season/Series 01, Presumed Dead, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-25 08:18:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15636813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karples/pseuds/karples
Summary: "Whatever happens, I'll be here," he'd told Takashi, unaware of the exact nature of his promise. He had been thinking only of what Ruth spoke to Naomi and what comprised so many marriage vows: "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay..."(In which there is discussion of Takashi, poetry, and dead dog movies.)





	to the end of his triumph

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pvwork](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pvwork/gifts).



> slides in just as s7 drops--
> 
> for L!
> 
> also for M, for her unwavering support & her feedback/beta-read. 
> 
> love you both so much.

The day prior to The Official Announcement the top brass summoned all Garrison officers ranking second lieutenant and above for a meeting. The email betrayed very little of its subject--titled KERBEROS MISSION UPDATE, red-flagged to indicate high importance--or rather, it betrayed nothing of emotional substance.

Adam had been required at four previous meetings regarding mission progress, as the Kerberos mission was the most highly publicized expedition since the first successful attempt to retrieve samples from Saturn's rings (which Adam had copiloted with Takashi) without crew casualties. Given his history Adam was expected to answer Questions, PR department be damned. When approached by worshipful cadets or colleagues or civilians about Kerberos it was difficult not to resent Takashi even more for continuing to drag Adam into his orbit despite the phenomenal distance dividing them.

It was sheer luck that had won Adam the Saturn assignment. The existing fraternization policies had prevented Takashi, a shoe-in for pilot-in-command, from advocating for Adam as copilot; but then the other viable candidate (a mutual friend, actually) broke their leg in an accident involving Christmas lights, a ladder, and an icy driveway. As neither Adam nor Takashi liked to celebrate others' misfortunes they were snappish and miserable until Takashi brought out a cartoonified Saturn pin on New Year's Day, applied it to Adam's collar, and kissed him firmly and sweetly, almost bashfully, saying, "Can we please stop fighting now?"

In retrospect, if Adam hadn't been shot into space at 7.9 km/s in a tiny metal chute and cultivated a taste for being near Takashi 24/7 in close quarters for half a year, then perhaps the sting of being eclipsed, of being perpetually second- or third-best, wouldn't be accompanied by these complicated and bitter feelings for a man whom Adam had excised from his life himself.

At any rate Adam brewed himself a cup of coffee in quarters no longer shared with Takashi and made his way down familiar corridors to Conference Hall 614. He didn't expect to open the double doors to a pervasive sense of unease, belying the murmur of scattered conversations and greetings. Before the blank glossy screen at the front of the hall, Commander Iverson's face seemed no less severe than usual--yet stiffer somehow. Grimmer. The second sign that something was wrong: Commanders Barton, Chang, and Maxwell were attending in-person rather than remotely. Then at six-hundred hours Commander Iverson called the gathering to attention from the podium: "It is with a heavy heart that I must share the news..."

PILOT ERROR

KIFA

Time seemed to skip a beat or stutter, or perhaps Adam blinked for a second too long. He felt the peculiar but distinct sensation of the ground lurching beneath him, as if he hadn't been properly strapped into the cockpit of a flight simulator and was consequently thrown by a difficult maneuver. His feet found the ground again. The low buzz of confusion among the ranks crescendoed into an uproar. Someone repeated, "You've got to be kidding me... You've got to be kidding..." The administrative assistants began distributing thick white packets down the rows while Iverson instructed them to avoid reporters and offer no comment if accosted. There would be a formal press release the following day with remarks and condolences from the upper echelons of the Garrison; until then, the information shared was purely confidential.

Dutifully Adam followed along in the packet, still holding his coffee in one hand--final readings from the craft, final crew logs. He could feel eyes on the back of his unprotected neck like heat from the sun. He took a sip from his cup, burning the roof of his mouth. He realized abstractly that he would be expected to answer Questions again.

"A moment of silence for the fallen..."

Perhaps it would sink in. Perhaps it wouldn't. Perhaps it didn't matter how Adam reacted. Perhaps once Takashi became the Garrison's poster boy or the public's sweetheart the loss of him would not or could not be experienced solely on the individual level but en masse, like a collective, all-encompassing tidal wave of grief for a familiar stranger whom Adam had been losing fraction by fraction long before Kerberos and whose absence he had grown accustomed to.

Perhaps Takashi had never been tethered to anything, anyone, anywhere. In the early days Adam remembered it seemed as if Takashi had strode into this world beholden to no one and nothing but some relentless drive or hunger within himself that others called ambition and he called devotion. Perhaps it really was devotion. Perhaps he had always been most devoted to the deepest regions of space, not so dissimilar to death, and finally it had come for him or he had gone to meet it.

Perhaps it would sink in. Perhaps it would. Perhaps it would sink. Perhaps, sinking.

KIFA

KIFA

KIFA

1ST LT. TAKASHI SHIROGANE

KIFA

Adam's eyes stayed dry. So fucking selfishly he thought: What the hell did I do to deserve this?

 

\--

 

Adam and Takashi had, in a way, always been peripheral to one another, skirting the edges of each other's notice. As students on the pilot track they had initially been assigned to different flight teams in different squadrons. Partway into the second semester of their second year the Garrison instituted a new policy anonymizing flight sim scores and rankings to everyone but the instructors in an effort to encourage teamwork and camaraderie rather than vicious competition. Privately Adam felt that it was too late for their class and the upper classes, though perhaps the first years were still salvageable; by that juncture, every second-year knew the top scorers by name, if not by face, and so everyone knew TSHIROGA (as displayed on and truncated by the monitors).

At the start of their third year both Adam and Takashi qualified for the accelerated learning program where they were placed in the same squadron. During introductions for their first team exercise Takashi greeted him and said, "Adam, right? I'm--"

"Takashi, I know," Adam interrupted, taking his hand.

"--Shiro, actually. Most people call me Shiro."

"Oh." Adam's palm burned as he pulled it back. Unfair though it was, he was prepared to dislike Takashi for embarrassing him when it was he who had assumed too much. "I see. Sorry."

That quick, generous smile caught Adam off-guard. "Buuut I don't mind Takashi. I guess I can make an exception."

Stumbling out of the simulator two hours later Adam weathered the aftereffects of an adrenaline crash: knees trembling, his whole arm shaking as he pressed his student ID to the scanner to log the session. He felt as if he had had--not to be dramatic--a Moment or an Experience. He had never flown neck-to-neck like that, he had never imagined that he could fly like that, he had never seen anyone fly like that. He had almost been nauseous. He felt exuberant and inspired and daunted and crushed into a powder and microscopic and magnified and absolutely electrified in the face of someone else's prowess. He felt--there's something here. Or there, in that person. There's something else in that person, that person is something else.

He felt like he was soaring. Falling and falling without striking the ground.

Takashi bumped into him in the hallway. He too was quaking head to toe, the shirt under his half-unzipped flight suit (a dress code violation) damp with sweat, the band on his right wrist glistening like he'd wiped his forehead on it. He had a wild, vibrant, daredevil grin on his face. "Adam. That was amazing," he said quickly. "You and your crew are amazing. The way you dodged that asteroid--"

"That was nothing. The way you took that cliff drop--"

They shared a laugh.

"That was nothing," Takashi echoed. "Hey--" His hand settled featherweight on Adam's forearm. "See you next class?"

Adam was not the impulsive type but he took the leap: "Or today, at dinner, if you want to talk. I sit with my team in the B-wing cafeteria--"

Takashi's grin widened. "Great. I'll find you."

The whole exchange couldn't have lasted longer than five minutes. As Moments were wont to do the excitement faded, and Adam came out of the encounter feeling a little bruised, physically and emotionally. In the showers his typical pragmatism overtook his confidence or burgeoning complacence: he was demonstrably skilled, definitely on track, but no one was guaranteed a future. He would have to fight for his place in it. He would have to be diligent.

Even the best and most promising of pilots made mistakes.

 

\--

 

The failure of the Kerberos mission was the talk of the campus for a week, then two weeks, then onward. The river of questions and conspiracy theories forced Adam to submit multiple paid leave requests. He was exhausted by the barrage of news from which he could not turn:

KIFA

KIFA

PILOT ERROR

KIFA

Alone, he had more than enough time to prod and dissect this dread gestating inside of him. He found it opaque and incomprehensible in a Dickinsonian way--"No Man can compass a Despair/As round a Goalless Road... His Ignorance--/the Angel that pilot Him along--" One day he had the chilling and slightly hysterical thought that something fundamental in him had ceased to function, that perhaps he didn't deserve to cry, or that this loss was incommunicable, or that he wasn't truly sad, or that he wasn't sad enough, or that this dread was merely an omen and it would sink in soon. It had him, it had seized him; it was a dead end, he was cornered, it was bearing down on him, there was no escape. It hadn't been like this when his nana passed, and he had loved her too; had he changed so much? Was he a cold person?

Toward the end he had, ironically, accused Takashi of the same thing: coldness, indifference. Was that a common feature of adulthood, to become so emotionally fucking distorted or convoluted that actions that seemed simple for children--weeping, throwing tantrums, purging emotions--became a chore or an ordeal?

At a loss Adam called his step-sister, Stella, because she was the only person he knew who loved Takashi and wasn't from the Garrison. He thought that perhaps he could jumpstart the fossilized machinery of his grief by listening to her alternately talk and cry about Takashi--the what-ifs and could-have-beens, the places that Takashi wanted to visit, the movies that he wanted to watch, how young he was--no, sorry, had been--but her voice came to Adam as if over a distance. Literally he was at a distance; Stella was located in New York. But over the clear and unbroken connection whatever she spoke resolved into intelligible noise. He understood the meaning yet his attention was split.

Sitting at the dining table draped in the yellow desert light, holding his phone to his ear with his shoulder, he was thinking about the dead dog movies that had so upset Takashi.

Not all of them culminated in violent tragedy. In fact, as far as Adam was concerned, several were feel-good films wherein the dog led a happy life and passed peacefully in old age, surrounded by loved ones.

They'd put Takashi in a Mood anyway.

Takashi had struggled to provide a satisfactory explanation for his Moods: "Well, the dog dies. That's sad, no matter how it happens." Adam had just lifted his brows, prompting Takashi to try again--"Okay, dead pets are sad in general, but dead dog movies outnumber dead cat movies, dead parrot movies, dead iguana movies..." Again with the iguanas; their former biology instructor's colorful, high-strung iguana had fascinated Takashi. But really what Takashi had always wanted was a cat, Stella was saying. There just hadn't been enough time. He'd been going on more and more space missions which wouldn't have been fair to the hypothetical cat, whose hypothetical name would have been Schrodinger--"And thematically, dead dog movies are the worst."

"Thematically."

"I'm serious. Death is sad, but what makes dead dog movies _sadder_ \--"

"'Thematically'--"

"--Shut up--is the theme of _devotion_."

"So the love between dogs and people makes you sad somehow?"

"Sort of?" Then, because Takashi knew that Adam despised equivocances and semantic hairsplitting: "Though I don't think love and devotion are the same thing."

"Takashi, that is the most pretentious, nitpicky--"

"They're not the same! Check the dictionary." Takashi's expression had been stern but his eyes playful and laughing, so much of the boy from third-year still within him. "Similar, but not the same. I feel like devotion is more--patient. It waits." And he'd laid his head against Adam's shoulder in an obvious bid to soften him up, signaling the end of that conversation.

Sometime between Saturn and Kerberos, Adam had called Stella in a rare panic not dissimilar to whatever he was experiencing now. As partners and pilots of the Garrison he and Takashi were well-aware of the occupational hazards and risks, Takashi unfortunately moreso given the fluctuating state of his health, and out of necessity they had previously discussed what-to-do's in the event of death. However, Adam had never been appointed executor of anyone's anything nor had it been suggested until then.

"It's currently my aunt, but she's turning seventy-four this year," Takashi had told him. "And with her dementia... Look, I know this is a lot. Take your time. Just let me know if you're okay with it."

"And are you?" Stella had asked Adam.

The implications had been staggering, resisting easy digestion; it was not, Adam felt, unlike an informal marriage proposal with all of the commitment minus the tax benefits. Should the worst transpire there would be multitudes upon multitudes of documents to review and sign, bills to pay, funerary arrangements to be organized, and of course the emotional duties and the disbursement of everything left to everyone left behind--not that Takashi's will named many people despite the countless who loved him or wanted to love him, be him, or simply be near him. The death gratuity from the Garrison and the majority of Takashi's savings would support his elderly single aunt; his possessions plus remaining funds would be sold, donated, or distributed between that one problem cadet who had become Takashi's faithful second shadow and select few friends whom Takashi had considered sufficiently close, of which Adam had once been part (and was likely still part).

There had been such a depth or a reservoir of feeling in Takashi, unplumbed by prying persons. Over and over he would fall into it with such bizarre and enviable grace that Adam had been grateful simply to bear witness to it. Adam had had to be very patient to achieve such closeness with Takashi. He had also been willing to wait for the rest.

So he had said to Stella, "God, it's a hell of a lot of responsibility. But so help me I don't want it to be anyone else."

To Takashi, he had said, much lighter, "It's fine, I'll do it. Who else is there?"

The glib remark had been for Takashi's benefit. Adam had most wanted to say: It destroys me to think about these preparations for death, and I mustn't reveal how much I hate to go through the motions of letting you go, which is not so much an _if_ as it is a _when_ , because I love you so, I love you so.

But evidently not enough to hold on to Takashi as he departed on the riskiest space expedition to date.

It didn't matter. As luck would have it Adam would have lost him regardless.

In a world that was spinning resolutely onward Stella was asking if Adam was okay (again). Adam answered, "Yes," wondering in a clinical fashion whom Takashi had named his new executor. Wondering at this unspecific, shapeless regret sharpened by hindsight, that he should have waited a little longer if he had been so certain of the outcome:

KIFA

KIFA

He wished that his last words to Takashi had been different. At the very least, if Adam had been more prescient, if he had known, he would have gone to say goodbye.

 

\--

 

Breaking the news that he and Takashi had parted ways prior to the Kerberos liftoff had been a trial. In a friend circle where privacy and discretion were generally prized over nosiness (with the exception of Matt and Estefani, both of whom knew who-said-what and when and where and why, always) the declaration took everyone by surprise. Most of all, because it was Takashi, and because it was Kerberos, sides were taken and lines in the sand were drawn.

Having been largely overlapping Adam and Takashi's respective social lives shifted in the aftermath, though Adam's friendships survived intact for the most part. He and Matt had never been close due to their wildly disparate interests, but out of a staunch mutual desire to avoid conflict they managed to maintain a casual rapport. After all they could hardly forget that it had been Matt's father who had endorsed Takashi as pilot-in-command and catalyzed their break-up.

To the average bystander, Commander Holt's support seemed genuine. He was such a well-liked and soft-spoken man, but Adam suspected that he was also motivated by self-interest. Since the older, more experienced pilots of previous intrasolar missions to the outer planets were long retired (the space exploration program had been paused indefinitely during the Third Cold War, producing a large age gap between the previous generation of explorers and the next), viable candidates were limited to the most recent pool of graduates, which included Takashi and Adam. However, the likelihood that any candidates besides Takashi could navigate the latest sims skillfully and safely enough to secure board approval was slim. If researchers were to journey to Kerberos within the next two rather than ten years, by which time Commander Holt would almost certainly be out of commission, then Takashi was the best choice. Furthermore, according to his doctors, Takashi would be in peak condition for the next three years. The timing couldn't be more convenient.

Given his charitable disposition Takashi had refused to hear a single word against Commander Holt. He and Adam had never before argued so passionately or so bitterly but they would continue to outdo themselves over the coming months. The volley of grudges previously unaired grew fierce--you don't trust me, you use my illness as an excuse to patronize me, you talk about me like I'm already dying; you don't devote time to our relationship, you're reckless about your health, you don't love me as much as I love you.

At that last accusation Takashi had looked at Adam with dark, gleaming, reproachful eyes. Not only had Takashi seemed like a complete stranger then, but Adam also hadn't recognized himself, utterly transformed by his fury or fear or both.

"I'm not trying to tear you down," Adam had said, "I'm tired of being treated like your enemy."

"And I'm tired of you telling me what I can or can't do."

"I'm not saying that you can't, I'm saying that you shouldn't."

"Funny how semantics are only important when you want them to be--"

"Like it or not, you could be a liability to your crew--"

"I've been given the green light by the doctors!"

"And anything could happen. I can't watch you throw your fucking life away--"

Try as they might they'd been unable to compromise, buckling down to wait each other out. From years in the desert Adam had learned that time eroded even the most stalwart of defenses. Yet somehow he'd failed to account for the rest of the world, which would be not waiting but demanding their participation. More than that he had failed to consider how, in light of new revelations, doubt could fester as if in an infected wound. Constantly he would ransack his memory in search of Incidents that could explain the accelerating decay of their relationship. Some of these Incidents were not Incidents at all but indisputable facts, such as: Adam was an exemplary pilot, but Takashi had exceeded him, reducing the number of flights that they could copilot together. And chief among the Incidents: when Adam had tentatively mentioned the prospect of marriage while preparing dinner, and Takashi had startled, blurting out: "Adam... are you sure?" To which Adam, stung, had wanted to retort, "Never surer, why the hell do you think I'm asking, are _you_ sure," but instead said, unconvincingly, "There's no rush."

Adam had spent dinner alternately seething, confused, and betrayed by Takashi's resounding silence and how Takashi would let them go to bed upset (or so it appeared) until Takashi cornered him in the bathroom in the midst of brushing his teeth and held on from behind.

"I'm sorry," Takashi had said into Adam's shoulder. "I want to marry you. I--"

Then he'd confessed to Adam that, at fifteen hundred hours earlier that day, Commander Iverson had informed him of his advancement to the final selection process for an undisclosed assignment. Historic, Iverson had called it. Monumental. An opportunity that Takashi had been working toward all his life. Preoccupied and anxious, Takashi hadn't expected Adam to pose a question of such significance--"I love you, I'm sorry for hurting you. I said the wrong thing. I just don't know if now is the right time."

Envy was a reflex that Adam had become adept in suppressing, the price of choosing to follow someone so closely so as to be standing in their shadow or singed by their brilliance. "Whatever happens, I'll be here," he'd told Takashi, unaware of the exact nature of his promise. He had been thinking only of what Ruth spoke to Naomi and what comprised so many marriage vows: "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay..."

That Incident had likely been the beginning of the end. They had lost each other not all at once but incrementally through concessions made, time ceded to the demands of their careers, arguments unresolved yet too tender and painful to rekindle. In retrospect, Adam wondered if he should not have agreed to postpone the engagement. It was an awful notion that simultaneously relieved and guilted him to think--that if he hadn't relented, if he hadn't brushed the proposal aside as if it were a whim rather than a persistent desire, driven by a private and equally persistent fear of inadequacy, then perhaps his life, though who knew what parts of it, would be different.

When Kerberos was revealed to be the assignment, Adam had assumed that the mission was symbolic of something, that Takashi wanted to prove something. He had overlooked one critical piece, which was that Takashi had the patience of a mountain or a glacier. He could outwait anyone or anything. As he loved to say: Patience yields focus, a simple aphorism that meant much more once Takashi disclosed the nature of his diagnosis. Learning to be patient with himself had been an arduous task constantly underway. Adam often felt that Takashi would never learn it; he seemed to excel in self-sabotage, aggressively pushing his body instead of respecting its signals. Other times, Adam glimpsed in him an almost contradictory restraint or containment--watchful, reluctant to engage, and perpetually assessing.

In any case the jury was in and the verdict delivered. While Adam had been waiting for Takashi, Takashi had been waiting for greatness. Perhaps Adam was examining the situation through too cynical a lens, as Takashi had fought to preserve their relationship without declining the Kerberos mission. Perhaps it was testament to how little Adam had changed since their first encounter, as he continued to search for excuses to exonerate himself of any fault, as if it could have been more Takashi's fault than the inevitable outcome of any number of small, unintentional missteps by both parties.

On the morning of liftoff, like every other creature on the ground, Adam watched the rocket rise from afar. He was skipping the official viewing despite having received an invitation; he was self-aware enough to realize that he would be unable to feign happiness and stayed home rather than spoil the occasion. In his quarters, substantially less crowded since Takashi moved his belongings into storage, Adam opened each and every window to a blazing, argent sky, bisected by the thick white plume of a rocket contrail.

The dawn breeze flowed inward and over him. Adam took a sip from his cup and readied himself to greet the first day of his new life.

 

\--

 

Eventually the Kerberos failure dropped from the top of every website to the middle, and Adam resumed his regular duties. On an uneventful weekday after his latest trip to perform maintenance on a low-earth-orbit space station, he received a call from an unidentified number around twenty-one hundred hours, which went to voicemail as he'd forgotten his phone in his quarters during his late night walk. He had been having difficulty sleeping, not nightmares but a persistent wakefulness, and the flatness of the surrounding desert was a comfort. Except for the distant spires, not quite black in the semidarkness, it seemed almost featureless.

The heat was beginning to leech from sand and stone, Adam could sense it through his clothing. The air was terribly dry. Takashi had called it nosebleed weather. The last time that Adam had been out in the desert for no urgent work-related reason was because of Takashi, who had liked to plan get-aways for the sake of their combined health. Following the Saturn trip they'd been buried under a flood of interviews and meetings with PR, Marketing, the top brass, and important somebodies; they'd held up admirably, particularly Takashi, but Adam had been close to combustion of the mental kind and his affable facade was slipping. So Takashi had packed and thrown their bags on the back of his hoverbike and said, chin lifted, "C'mon. Let's ditch." His hand extended and his smile so steady and confident and kind. He'd made it sound so easy. Saturn had changed everything in the blink of an eye but Takashi remained unerring, unflagging, consistent. In those moments Adam had felt perilously close to Takashi like he would fall into a precipice if he leaned any closer and keep falling and falling without fear. His only anchor: Takashi's back against his front and his free hand over Adam's.

They'd streaked into the desert toward the infinitely far red horizon, and it had been like being free, but it had also been like being small, surrounded by slumped monuments rendered edgeless by greater natural processes, outlasting everything. Adam had come to the desert tonight in search of that feeling, the feeling that none of this fucking mattered. He'd once taken solace in that, pretending that nothing mattered until it inevitably did. The sky was thick and clouded with stars. Though he once beheld it in awe it now seemed empty and devoid.

He returned dissatisfied to his quarters. His phone notified him about his missed call, which he set on speaker as he conducted his bedtime routine:

"Hi, Adam, my name is Colleen Holt--I'm Matt's mother and Sam's partner. We've never met but I'm sure you already know what this call's going to be about..."

Adam didn't sleep a wink. As agreed upon in a follow-up call Colleen met him in his quarters at eighteen hundred hours two days later. He claimed that he had "made" dinner despite half of it having been purchased prepared from the nearest grocery store, which was an hour's drive away, and Colleen could almost certainly tell as he hadn't removed the store label on it. In person he could see that Matt and Katie (whom he'd never met either but of whom there existed photographic evidence) clearly took after her. They were like funhouse mirror images stretched and squished until they were their own distinct entities.

For lack of anything better to do, he and Colleen made awkward small talk; he learned that she was a nurse and that she was planning to return to St. Cloud, Minnesota, where her parents resided, as far as possible from the desert which she had started to associate with death. "Don't get me wrong, I know there's plenty of life in the desert," she said, laughing. "Lizards and mice and scorpions and snakes, all sorts, did you know that Matt used to collect these beetles--they looked like roaches, but they were beetles..."

"Yeah, Palo Verde beetles, I think."

"That's right! Did Matt ever show you? I forget how long he kept them--in his bunk, no less. He got in so much trouble for having them. He could never keep his nose out of trouble, he had too much encouragement from Katie. He was always doing risky things to impress her, he wasn't ready to grow out of being her hero..."

All of this was news to Adam. Colleen gave Adam a wry smile. He was suffused with a vague shame for having been so preoccupied with Takashi that he hadn't spared much energy to think of Matt. Matt the dream-bigger who had run circles around his instructors and slowed down to explain whatever complex program or formulae that he'd cooked up in the computer facilities like a highly questionable drug to precisely no one. They had studied together for one of their basic GEs which had saved Adam's GPA, though more than once Adam had bailed on Matt without warning because Matt had been exactly that frustrating. "You didn't know each other very well," Colleen surmised. Adam nodded. "He mentioned you a couple of times--Adam, Shiro's boyfriend."

"Well, that I was," Adam said. His hands rested on the table before him like huge indolent place settings. He wondered suddenly if she blamed Takashi for the accident that had cost her both spouse and son. PILOT ERROR. She had reason to do so yet the possibility that she did shook him. He couldn't bear to ask. Terrible as it was, he wanted to say I told you so or I told them so but there were none of them left to tell. He had been generating too many appalling ideas recently. No doubt he'd regret each and every one if actualized; even after the mechanical malfunction on Ganymede that had hospitalized Takashi and his flight crew Adam had never said such a thing nor would he do it, given the opportunity. He had looked at Takashi, drawn and haggard with bloodshot eyes, breathing with the assistance of a ventilator, and said: "Takashi. Thank God you came back."

The crepuscular light produced a glare across Adam's glasses, behind which he hid to avoid Colleen's gaze. "It's nice of you to put together a slideshow for the memorial," he said.

"Thank you," said Colleen.

"I put Takashi's photos on an external hard drive for you. They're all nice photos. You could pick a few at random and they'd be fine." He was lying. He hadn't looked at the photos so much as squinted at the thumbnails on his tablet and saved the ones with Tall, Dark, and Handsome in them onto the drive. He didn't want to see photos of Takashi besides the official one chosen for the broadcasts.

"Are you sure you don't want to choose them together? Or by yourself?" Colleen asked.

"I'm sure. We broke up," Adam added.

"So?"

"Okay, let me rephrase. I left him."

To his surprise Colleen repeated, "So? You can't tell me you don't care, looking like that." Adam instinctively touched his face. "And I don't want to look at photos of a dead man by myself, I've done enough of that already--and for two."

Adam averted his eyes as she stared at the ceiling; he had done that himself, when trying not to cry. "I'm sorry."

"So am I, really, I am. But I think you should choose, or at least have a say in it. It's how he'll be remembered--"

In an instant two scenarios unfolded in Adam's head. In the first, he wanted very desperately to say: Let me forget. The sight of the plate before him--crusted with residual flecks of meat, broccoli, and rice--made Adam feel greasy and nauseous. He had no idea how he'd stomached any dinner when his head throbbed and his teeth ached from grinding them. He wanted to say: I want to stop making sacrifices for him, he's gone now. What else is there to sacrifice to? Yet as he thought it he understood that he had been sacrificing so many of his waking hours to Takashi and this quagmire of emotion threatening to sink him. Already it might have sunken and drowned him. He was not moving on, he was merely sidestepping it. He didn't want to remind himself visually of what and who had been lost. Let it be consigned to the coffers of memory. Bury it, bury Takashi.

In the second, which was what he did say: "I don't know if how I remember him is how I want the world to remember him. But I'll help."

For a long moment Colleen remained silent. He could tell that he had put her in a difficult position and regretted it. "Are you sure?" she said, instead of recommending him a grief counselor, which Stella had been doing since the headlines broke.

Adam contemplated denial but his justifications seemed insufficient and rang like excuses. He thought of what he had told Stella--But so help me I don't want it to be anyone else. "As sure as I can be," Adam replied with more acid than intended. Then, recalling that Colleen was not only bearing this burden alone, but also simultaneously caring for a grieving dependent: "Sorry. I'm--I haven't been well. As you've probably guessed."

They fell silent again.

"It's hard, knowing there won't be any more photos," Colleen said. "Or a future, with or for them."

"Something like that."

"I think about Katie and how she's going to grow up without her brother and her dad... and I think about Matt and Sam--I fought so badly with Sam about Kerberos. I said, it's one thing for you to devote your life to your research, but for the love of God, don't take Matt with you. Our worst fight, Matt had been so upset to hear it. He and his father and Katie, all peas in a pod. It was like you couldn't keep them here, no matter what you did--they'd always be looking somewhere else. On their own personal odysseys. Anyway--what I'm trying to say is, it's funny how we all mean well. But somehow the words that come out mean something else entirely."

"Let me get the hard drive," Adam said, not knowing how to respond to her kindness. Takashi's kindness had similarly flustered him; in fact, what had surprised Adam most upon insinuating himself into Takashi's friend circle was how cliquey it was for a person who lent his shoulder to many a crying classmate and begrudged nearly no one words of sympathy or advice or encouragement to the point of being occasionally unhelpful or irritating.

"I'll clear the dishes," Colleen offered.

"No, don't. Please sit, don't clear the dishes, I'll do that. Just let me get the hard drive."

He returned with the drive to join her on the couch under the fading glow from outside. The springs creaked, a pathetic chorus. "Sorry," Adam said again. He felt the indescribable need to apologize to her, over and over. "In defense of the couch, it was free."

"A hand-me-down?"

"In a way. Someone moved out and left it by the dumpsters. Takashi brought it back on his own and spent a week cleaning it inside out, it was filthy. The covering's new though." He set up his tablet, methodically swiping through folders. "How far back are you looking for?"

"Oh, I've reached out to his aunt for childhood photos. But for the majority of his young adulthood he lived on campus..."

Adam tapped the folder marked 21XX. Clusters of childish faces unhardened by age grinned back at him--among them, a few dark-haired heads, one with an incorrigible cowlick. He wished that he could romanticize their adolescence as a simpler, better, less complicated, bygone era, but he'd navigated puberty and his attraction to Takashi with such unease. Before they began dating he'd confronted Takashi: "Why do you let me call you Takashi?" The straightforwardness of Takashi's answer had only confounded him: "Why shouldn't I?"

"I have some from third-year onward, if that'll help," Adam said.

"It would, let's have a look--if you're still sure?"

Adam had always preferred to rip the bandage off in one go and tapped the image thumbnail.

Colleen departed at roughly one-hundred hours with the sky at its darkest and the moon at its highest, hanging overhead like a luminous pendulum arrested mid-swing. He walked her to her car and waited until its tail lights vanished beyond the gates of the Garrison. Unable to help himself, he went through the rest of the photos up to the most recent--Takashi smiling widely in Adam's denim jacket, framed by an unidentifiable body of water and towering evergreens in a far, far away place.

When Adam checked the digital clock its face read 03:49. He hadn't collected the dirty plates and abandoned them where they lay. He would clean them tomorrow. He fell into bed and into a fitful rest punctuated by brief periods of bleary, confused half-awakeness, in which reality appeared more fictitious and incredible than a dream.

 

\--

 

In response to public demand the Garrison partnered with major television corporations to broadcast a memorial service for the Kerberos three. Short segments of Colleen's slideshow were aired, and the commanders each gave polite, scripted, barely sentimental speeches. Afterward Adam joined a few of Takashi's former crewmates for comment. One particularly gutsy reporter tilted the mic toward Adam and asked, "Sir--some might say that, as it grieves for one of the Garrison's most beloved pilots, the world of space exploration has lost its direction. As First Lieutenant Shirogane's former flight partner--and our sincerest condolences for your loss--do you have any words for our audience on moving forward and the future of space exploration?"

"Yes--" Adam cleared his throat, unfazed. He was imitating Takashi's press face as best he could--friendly, likable, surrendering no more than what he wanted to give. "Thank you, Ms. Tekeser. I believe I can speak for everyone at the Galaxy Garrison when I say this isn't a loss that we can move on from, not in the way that you're suggesting. Our top talent and leading-edge tech didn't survive the trip to Kerberos. Which means, as a result, revaluation of our pilot training and selection processes, as well as pressure on our engineers to innovate. Space exploration will press forward, but we can't afford to move on until we understand what went wrong."

The reporter nodded, pleased with the sound bite. "Thank you, sir--"

It was the private memorial service that Adam dreaded. More specifically, it was Takashi's aunt Hisako that Adam dreaded to meet. Of course they had been introduced before but he was uncertain whether she would welcome his presence. Colleen, who had organized the service with Hisako and assistance from the Garrison, had reassured Adam that his attendance would be appreciated and that she would save him and Stella two seats in the front row. He had turned down her offer, requesting instead to be seated somewhere less conspicuous--beside Estefani, for example, with assorted mutual friends as a protective barricade.

As it happened Adam needn't have worried about Hisako's reaction. When he entered the chapel of the funeral home Hisako stood, aided by a person who was either a nurse or care home personnel, and took Adam's hand with soft, spotted fingers. "Adam! And Stella," she said, smiling fretfully. "It's been so long. When was the last time you visited with Takashi..."

"I believe it was during New Year's a year ago, ma'am."

"Was it really a year ago?"

"A bit more than. About a year and a half."

She embraced him, then relinquished him to receive the next invitee. Stella tucked her hand into the crook of Adam's arm and whispered, "You don't think Shiro told her about...?"

"No, I'm sure he did. It must have slipped her mind."

The rows filled quickly with decorated Garrison uniforms and a smattering of nonmilitary formalwear representing the extended family and friends of both the Holts and Shiroganes. Scanning the the room, Adam located Colleen and Katie, red-eyed and pale, at the front; Estefani and co. congregated on one side; and lurking awkwardly a few seats behind them, sullen and solitary, Takashi's problem cadet and second shadow.

The sheer unbridled animosity with which Keith regarded Adam was enough to give Adam pause. Upon further consideration he should have expected no less. From the scarce details that Takashi had disclosed about Keith's childhood, Keith had been abandoned by numerous foster families the instant that he became "inconvenient." He must have concluded that Adam had discarded Takashi as well--likely unforgivable, from his point of view.

Adam suffered no urge to explain himself as he figured that he'd have little chance of success. Keith wouldn't understand. He probably conceptualized love as unambiguous, unequivocal, and unwavering. Even Stella had struggled to understand ("Have you tried this, have you tried that...") as if Adam hadn't tried everything or as if he would willingly commit more of his time and future to an endeavor doomed to failure. For it had been an endeavor, requiring attention and diligence to cultivate. And for the sum of his efforts he had memories, an insubstantial pageant spanning over half a decade, of an imperfect man whom no pilot of their generation would ever surpass, not for lack of skill but because never again would Takashi make another mistake. His record was marred only by the error that had simultaneously killed and immortalized him.

The memorial opened with the standard salute as the pallbearers carried in three coffins, segueing into the slideshow and eulogies from Colleen, Hisako, assorted friends and colleagues, and a minister (accompanied by a Garrison chaplain) for the Holts, who were nominally Protestant though in practice rather undevoted. The verses selected by the minister were unfamiliar to Adam who hadn't been the most attentive in Sunday school; the bench creaked beneath his shifting and restless weight. As a child, he had been taught that the devotion best rewarded was religious in nature; it alone would be consummated upon death whereas mortal ties would be torn asunder. Even so, it had been the punishments visited upon those who committed various evils, rather than the nature of devotion itself, that had left the greatest impression on Adam, as if devotion could be defined by its lack.

Stella had her arm pressed to one of her eyes, a wet spot materializing on her sleeve. Adam spared a glance at Hisako, whom he knew to be agnostic, and from the movement of her shoulders could tell that she was weeping.

"And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am," continued the minister. Adam caught the hushed sound of another attendee crying--one of Takashi's friends--and a peculiar chill stole over him. "You know the way to the place where I am going..."

To the right of the minister lay the three coffins wrapped in flags and wreathed in flowers. At the head of each coffin sat a large framed photograph, taken by the Garrison's PR department, of its respective absent occupant. Seated across the aisle the pallbearers and band and bugler and color guard and so on had their heads respectfully lowered. Adam found himself sympathizing with them or at least relating to how he imagined that they felt, displaced in a sea of mourners. But unlike them he had lost someone. There, in that closed, leftmost casket. No one and someone rested there; someone who hadn't been no one rested there.

The chill deepened into an ache or a weight or a portentous pressure. Adam carried it as they rose en masse for the transfer ceremony from memorial service to cemetery amid organ music. He carried it as the pallbearers bore the coffins out of the hearse, silver handles glinting, and the band and marching elements passed. He carried it as the minister and chaplain led the funeral procession to the grave sites, where the smell of freshly turned nitrogenous soil filled his nose.

The sun shone relentlessly hot through low and sparse cloud coverage such that Adam had to squint at the minister. A haze more vapor than mist permeated the field, studded with upright stones in narrow rows, and the grass trailed dew on his shoes. He heard none of the minister's second and final sermon. He couldn't look away from the holes in the ground, lying parallel. The crack of three volleys from seven rifles split the air, a beat off from the irregular cadence of his heart pounding in his ears. Takashi had wanted to be cremated but he couldn't be cremated if he wasn't here. Or there. He was somewhere amid the wreckage unrecovered from space, he was neither here nor there. There was nothing in that casket, emptiness was in that casket which would soon be interred in the earth, away from which Takashi had always flown, as if rejecting its gravitational pull.

The origin of Adam's discontent eluded him. Empty casket funerals were more common than not at the Galaxy Garrison, as the vacuum of space killed countless crews. His starched collar was soaked with sweat, the bridge of his nose itched. It waits, he thought, marinating in his own discomfort. Devotion. He'd attempted to sever its hold on him, but because of it he'd gone to this place where people went to leave forever. He was finally beginning to understand that he would have to live with this for the rest of his life: the soil, the bright grass, the polished wood. TAKASHI SHIROGANE b. 2/29/21XX--d. 8/10/21XX chiseled into marble. Adam would never be fully indifferent to whoever was or wasn't packed into the dirt, whose missing body had been substituted with a coffin in a terrible literal metonymy. Time could anesthetize the urgency of this feeling but certain structures could withstand and endure it. He would always remember having had and having lost.

It angered and horrified him in equal measure to realize that, stranded on the other side of the grave, Takashi still had a pull on him. He was the specter that had had its claws in Adam since that devastating mission update. As if at a distance Adam listened to the bugler play Taps. Takashi had left him, or he had left Takashi, or they had left each other, yet the leaving was incomplete or ragged. The years that they had spent together would always belong to them; there could be no more and no less of it. Time spent was time lived. He would always have it inasmuch as life already lived couldn't be un-experienced.

The refracted light in his eyes was unbearable. The last notes of Taps faded away. Death was not closure, it was the farthest thing. If Takashi hadn't died then Adam would have been able to peacefully move on. The trauma of this sudden and brutal rift could not be returned like an unwanted package. Regret had etched itself into Adam not unlike Takashi's epitaph: "EVERYONE FORGETS THAT ICARUS ALSO FLEW."

The pallbearers began to fold the flags and offer them one by one to the chaplain, who presented Sam's to Colleen and Matt's to Katie. Stella squeezed Adam's bicep, saying, "Hang in there... just a bit longer." Hisako, supported by Colleen, accepted Takashi's flag with both hands. For a visceral, wretched moment Adam envisioned himself in her stead and hated himself for doing so. He hated that he had come and hated that he wanted to leave and hated that he didn't want to leave. He hated that he regretted his last words to Takashi, hated that he couldn't commit to them, hated that he regretted regretting. His insides twisted helplessly as if wrung by immense gravitational forces.

The coffins were deposited slowly and carefully, as if they truly carried precious burdens. A few attendees, including Adam and Stella, dropped into the holes bouquets of lilies and chrysanthemums that fell and flounced upon hitting wood. Katie tossed in a fistful of dirt, wiping her palm on her tights, and the hole returned with hollow sounds like rain. Then into it earth was shoveled methodically, laboriously, hollow rain sounds turning into muted earth sounds, until gentle mounds rose where once there were none.

Stella turned to him as the gathering started to disperse. "Do you have anything you want to say? To Shiro?"

"Nothing I haven't already said." Adam adjusted his collar. His eyes were too dry, smarting despite the humidity of the cemetery. A thin particulate dust from the shoveling had collected on his glasses. "Nothing he hasn't already heard."

Stella said, foregoing their usual argument about the potential of an afterlife, "Well, even if he's, you know... not with us anymore, it's the thought that counts."

Adam had been thinking of Takashi unprompted for weeks. He had washed the dishes leftover from Colleen's visit while thinking of Takashi. He had taught his classes using Takashi's recorded flight sims as examples. He had searched the desert for a feeling that Takashi had shared with him. All futile, practiced, dedicated gestures, instinctively performed--and to what end, of what consequence? Why had his heart not moved? What reason did it have to linger by a vacant grave site?

PILOT ERROR

KIFA

Adam touched the headstone. It was remarkably cold.

"Let's go," he told Stella, knowing that he would be back.

 

\--

 

And that, Adam thought, was why dead dog movies were so sad.

**Author's Note:**

> title & shiro's epitaph from "failing and flying" by jack gilbert. quotes from "no man can compass a despair" by emily dickinson; ruth 1:16; john 14:4.
> 
> (i couldn't resist with shiro's epitaph but also given that icarus is used as a cautionary tale it's not the most flattering thing to have on a tombstone... whoops)
> 
> any & all inaccuracies mine!


End file.
